Baby Teeth: Bite-sized tales of terror Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction / Dan Rabarts

  Caterpillars / Debbie Cowens

  White / Grant Stone

  Burying Baby / Paul Mannering

  People Pleaser / M Darusha Wehm

  Con Somma Passione / Lee Murray

  Giant / Jack Newhouse

  Winter Feast / Elizabeth Gatens

  What’s the Story, Mother? / Lewis Morgan

  Blonde Obsession / Jean Gilbert

  Simon Says / Matthew Sanborn Smith

  Tarantella Moon / Dan Rabarts

  Backyard Gardening / Jake Bible

  Because I Could ... / Celine Murray

  End of the Rainbow / Jenni Sands

  Kiss Your Mother / Alan Lindsay

  Practice Makes Perfect / Sally McLennan

  Blood Sisters / Matt Cowens

  Windows / M Darusha Wehm

  Dad’s Wisdom / Eileen Mueller

  Recession / Darian Smith

  Paper Butterfly / Alan Lindsay

  The Skulkybunking Wurld Champyon of the Hole Woorld / Paul Mannering

  Teach Your Children Well / Lee Murray

  The Character of 82 James St / Anna Caro

  Love Hurts / Jan Goldie

  Dark Night / Jenni Sands

  Friends / AJ Ponder

  Shadowed Halls / Michael J Parry

  If They Hadn’t Landed So Close / Matt Cowens

  All the Ghosts / Dan Rabarts

  The Boy with Anime Eyes / Kevin G Maclean

  The Oracle of Karawa / Paul Mannering

  Lockdown / Piper Mejia

  The Birthday Present / Sally McLennan

  Peter and the Wolf / Lee Murray

  How They See You / Morgan Davie

  The Dead Way / JC Hart

  Editors

  Contributors

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  As I sit down to write this, I’m still quite stunned by just how far a little bit of goodwill and a whole lot of talent can go. Things happen so fast, and before you know it, you’ve conceived and given birth to something and it’s heading out into the world all on its little lonesome.

  That’s the thing about kids – they grow up so fast. One minute you’re wiping that cute baby vomit off their chins, next thing you know you’re at their 21st and wiping that not-so-cute yard-glass vomit off their chins, and hands, and boots, and ... well, you get the picture.

  So it was with Baby Teeth. One minute, I’m reading a post on Reddit.com about ‘The Creepiest Thing Your Kid Has Ever Said’ – or words to that effect – and dropping an idle comment on Facebook about how here was fodder galore for inspiring creepy short stories, and the next thing you know those stories are here in a book, being suitably creepy and hopefully not involving too much vomit, cute or otherwise, all to raise money for charity so that more kids will grow up reading books.

  In all, twenty-seven writers from New Zealand and the USA thought it would be a good idea to donate a story or two – or three – for a good cause. We decided on the Duffy Books in Homes literary organisation as the good cause in question because, as writers, we need readers. So, we wrote a pile of stories which are completely unsuitable for children to raise money that we can donate to some good folk who will then spend that money buying books which are suitable for children, so that they can foster a love of reading in those kids as they grow up.

  But it wasn’t enough to trust to the collective narcissism of a bunch of writers. I wanted to know that this project had wider support, and so we decided to let the public decide if it was worth making Baby Teeth happen. We ran a crowd-funding campaign, asking people to show us their support for the book and for our goals by pre-ordering copies, and the response was better than I could’ve hoped for. We met our goal in just ten days, and nearly doubled it by the end of the campaign.

  Easy, right?

  I’d love to say it was, but nothing so bold and noble could be so simple. A lot of people put a tremendous amount of work into this book in a very short space of time to make it happen. Writers wrote. Designers designed. Artists arted. Typesetters typeset. And everyone involved worked their social media chops until they bled.

  But this is not a story collection for everyone. Let’s face it: children see a different world from us. They see the shapes in the dark and give them names. They hear the noises under the bed or inside the walls and give them fingers, claws. This book is mostly horror, and the nature of the material – being focused around children – means that what these pages contain may prove disquieting, uncomfortable and even a little sickening for some readers. These are stories that are willing to look into those disturbing things that lurk in the dark, in the minds of small children, or of the unwell, perhaps. Things that children seem able to see and express with more chilling clarity than many adults are ever willing to.

  You have been warned.

  But horror fiction also has a deeper purpose than simply making your skin crawl and your stomach queasy: a purpose based loosely around the philosophy of shining a light into the darker places where people so often don’t want to look, and trying to put into words the awful things that might be found there. Can fiction make us wonder about the real world, maybe help us see some sort of nightmarish reason in things that defy explanation, things we cannot personally stomach or fathom? Horror goes there. It forces us to look at the world, and sometimes we don’t like what we see.

  But fear not. You’ll also find stories of humour and fantasy in this book, tales of hope and anticipation, of the bond of family and the unbreakable chains that link parents and children, no matter what. Love can be terrifying, because we know that at any time it might all be broken or stripped away by powers beyond our control. So we hold tight to what matters, and we let the tooth fairies carry away these baby teeth, these fragments of what might have been if the world leaned a little towards the light, a little towards the shadow.

  Dan Rabarts – Wellington, August 2013

  Caterpillars

  Debbie Cowens

  For her fourth birthday, my daughter was given The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and it soon became her favourite book. Lucy loved to poke her fingers into the holes in the pages where the caterpillar had chomped its way through every kind of food.

  Real caterpillars, though, had proved a disappointment.

  ‘Mummy, it won’t eat the lollipop.’ I turned from the washing line to see Lucy standing beside one of the stripped swan plants, holding a red lollipop out to a fat black-and-yellow caterpillar as it inched up the leafless stalk.

  ‘Real caterpillars don’t like sweets, or any people food, really,’ I explained, carrying the laundry basket over to join her. ‘Monarch butterflies are very fussy eaters. They only like swan plants.’

  Lucy picked up the caterpillar between her thumb and forefinger, and lifted it across to a neighbouring plant. ‘But there are no leaves left on this one and it already has two baby caterpillars on it.’

  ‘They must have eaten them all.’

  Lucy held the caterpillar to her face and gave it a stern look. ‘Don’t be too fussy. You have to eat other leaves as well or you’ll never become a butterfly.’ She placed it on a waxy leaf of the lemon tree.

  ‘Come on inside now, Lucy. I need to get the washing in.’

  But that wasn’t the end of it.

  Late that night she appeared, standing over me by the bed.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispered in my face. ‘We need another swan plant. It’s hungry.’

  ‘Lucy? What are you doing up?’

  ‘It’s starving. It needs food.’

  ‘What?’ I switched on the bedside lamp, the sudden yellow light shocking
my eyes awake. The soft unbroken snores beside me meant that the light hadn’t disrupted Bill’s sleep. Little did.

  ‘The caterpillar.’

  ‘Oh, is that all? Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine,’ I muttered between yawns. ‘Go back to bed.’

  ‘No, it’s hungry. It won’t get to become a butterfly. It’ll just die.’

  Something about her voice chilled me. Maybe it was because I’d never heard her talk about death. Maybe it was the desperation in her voice and that she cared so much about helping the little caterpillar. Maybe agreeing was just the fastest way for me to get back to sleep.

  ‘OK, sweetie. I’ll get another swan plant tomorrow. We can plant it after kindy.’

  Checking the caterpillars’ progress became our post-kindy ritual. Lucy would count the caterpillars on each swan plant – we had six plants along the fence now – and monitor their progress.

  ‘Look, Mummy. The caterpillar’s peeled off its skin and gone into its Chris-a-Lucy-is.’ She pointed excitedly at the brown and green cocoon.

  ‘Chrysalis.’ Last week’s library trip had involved a book on butterflies with photos and life-cycle explanations.

  ‘How long until it becomes a butterfly?’

  ‘A week or two. You’ll have to wait, Lucy.’

  Lucy found the waiting hard. Impatient, she checked the swan plant three or four times a day, and spent most of every sunny afternoon playing in the garden where she could keep an eye on the chrysalises.

  Unfortunately, our cat, Mog, had also been enjoying the spring weather. She had killed several sparrows and a fledging starling, depositing their bodies in our hall, the bathroom, under our bed, and even in Lucy’s room.

  ‘If killing the poor birds wasn’t bad enough, she’s torn them to bits,’ I complained to Bill after finding a particularly disgusting mess of feathers and bloodied bird in Lucy’s wardrobe. ‘What if Lucy had found it? We’ll have to put a bell on that cat.’

  Thirteen days after Lucy found the first chrysalis, she came running in from outside to find me in the kitchen.

  ‘Mummy! The butterfly has hatched. Come and see!’

  Her excitement was contagious. I ran out behind her, thrilled to see one of our caterpillars had finally emerged as a beautiful red and black winged butterfly.

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked as we approached the row of swan plant stalks. ‘It hasn’t flown away yet, has it?’

  Lucy shook her head and pointed to the ground. There, drying on the bare earth at the foot of the plant, were two scarlet wings, veined with black like a stained-glass window. There was no creature attached to the torn fragments.

  ‘What happened to the butterfly?’ I asked.

  ‘Only the wings changed. I took off its skin but it hasn’t grown another Chris-a-Lucy-sis yet.’ She pointed to the top of the swan plant where the flayed remains of a butterfly’s body had been squashed into a ball and speared on the tip of a stalk.

  ‘You mustn’t do that, Lucy.’ I grabbed her arm with more force than I’d intended. ‘You’ve hurt it. It won’t grow another chrysalis now. It’s dead.’

  Lucy blinked at me. ‘I have its wings.’

  ‘No, we’ll bury the butterfly with its wings. And you must promise me you’ll never do that again, OK?’

  ‘OK, Mummy.’

  We buried the butterfly behind the swan plants. Lucy made a cross for the grave out of ice-block sticks.

  But words like never don’t have the same permanency with four-year-olds. I found four sets of torn butterfly wings in Lucy’s dresser drawer the next week.

  I showed the wings to Bill after Lucy had gone to bed. ‘We have to do something about it.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d told her off already.’

  ‘I did, but it was like she barely noticed. The look she gave me. It was just ... blank. Not upset or angry or anything. She’s really scaring me, Bill.’

  ‘Now you’re over-reacting. A lot of kids pull legs and wings off bugs. It doesn’t make them some psycho off one of your CSI shows.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant ...’

  Guilt silenced me. What kind of mother would fear her own child? How could I suspect my sweet little Lucy with her freckles and curls and giggles?

  After that we stayed indoors after kindy. I kept Lucy close. I read her stories and she helped me prepare dinner.

  ‘I like peeling, peeling Mister Potato, peeling Mister Carrot,’ she sang as she stood beside me.

  I smiled. Lucy could make up a song to accompany any activity.

  ‘Be careful with the peeler, sweetie. Remember, you always have to peel it away or you might cut yourself.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘It could cut me? Could it cut off your skin, too?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you, honey. But they’re sharp and you have to be careful so you don’t get hurt.’

  Lucy nodded and held out her vegetable peeler to me. ‘Show me the curly peel again, Mummy. Show me on Mister Potato.’

  I took the plastic handle and, grabbing a large spud from the sink, spiralled the blade around the top of the potato. ‘My granny showed me how to do this. She could peel a whole kumara in one long, curling piece. Do you think I can do this without breaking the peel?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Lucy grinned.

  ‘Ta-dah!’ I dangled the long coil of potato skin in front of her, and she clapped and giggled, but then shrieked when I deposited it into the compost container.

  ‘Mummy, no! Don’t throw it away.’

  ‘It’s just potato peel, Lucy. Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I want it,’ she growled.

  The determination in her eyes worried me more than the strange request. ‘It’s going in the compost. It’s good for the garden,’ I explained.

  I didn’t mention the potato peel to Bill. It would sound even crazier than the business with the butterfly wings.

  After dinner, Lucy seemed more like her usual sweet self. She sang her ‘I Like Bubbles’ song at bath time. She was angelic for hair-washing, scrunching her eyes shut and holding her breath like she was diving under the waves as I rinsed out her hair.

  ‘I like your skin.’ She grabbed my forearm as I wiped the water from her brow, her little fingers poking and feeling along my damp wrist. ‘It feels nice.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’ I pulled my arm back.

  ‘Mummy, why don’t people have wings?’

  ‘We’re not born with them, sweetie.’

  ‘Neither are caterpillars.’

  ‘No, but they grow them when they become butterflies. People don’t become butterflies.’

  ‘No, silly,’ Lucy giggled. ‘They die, die, die, and then they become angels. With wings.’

  She reached her dripping hands behind me in an awkward hug and squeezed the skin of my back. Where my wings would be.

  ‘Lucy, stop it. That’s not funny.’ I stood up, my voice stern to mask my fear, but she kept laughing. ‘Bill,’ I called down the hall. ‘Can you come down here?’

  Lucy was still giggling when Bill reached the bathroom. I gave him the look but he just grinned at Lucy.

  ‘What’s all this noise about? Is it you, little Miss Giggles, huh?’ He knelt down by the bath and splashed the water at Lucy who squealed in delight.

  ‘Don’t, Bill.’

  ‘Don’t what? Splash the giggle monster into submission?’ he joked. ‘Go have a sit down. Relax. I’ll take care of this.’

  I watched him playing with our cute little girl, flapping and laughing in delight. Was my imagination running wild? How could I let the words of a four-year-old girl, my daughter, get under my skin?

  ‘OK, don’t get her over-excited,’ I muttered. ‘It’s nearly bedtime.’

  A glass of red and half an hour of TV blotted out most of my worries. By the time I kissed Lucy goodnight, she was just my lovely daughter again. I resolved to get a good night’s sleep and headed to bed. My exhaustion was obvious as soon as I slid between the sheets. I could barely keep my eyes open and I fe
ll asleep within minutes of turning the lights off.

  I woke in the night with a terrible sense of danger. Unsure whether I’d had a nightmare or woken up to one, I blinked in the dark, my own breathing drowned out by Bill’s heavy snores. A glint of something silver flashed a few inches from my eyes and a familiar shape stood by the bed.

  ‘I want to peel off your skin,’ she whispered, her small hand pressed against my left cheek, the cold steel of the peeler on the other. ‘You’ll be a beautiful angel.’

  White

  Grant Stone

  When she saw him walking up the path, chainsaw in one hand, jerry can full of two-stroke mix in the other, Maria ran to Susan and buried her face in her shirt. ‘Don’t let him do it Mummy! Make him stop!’

  Susan smoothed Maria’s hair and spoke softly. ‘It’s okay, Peanut. We talked about this, remember?’

  Maria was sobbing. ‘He can’t do it! He can’t!’

  Maria ran into the house as soon as Paul stepped onto the front porch. He could still hear her crying as she ran up the hall.

  Susan looked at the chainsaw. ‘Put that in the garage.’

  *

  As far as Maria was concerned, there was no greater meal in the world than dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, pasta and a carrot on the side. But tonight she wasn’t eating. She nudged a stegosaurus around with her fork. ‘Why?’

  ‘Peanut, you know we love you,’ Susan said. ‘You know that, right?’

  Maria nodded.

  ‘Well, because we love you, Daddy and I want to buy a big house for you to live in. Don’t you want a great big bedroom? Don’t you want a pool?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maria’s voice was no more than a whisper. ‘But you can’t chop down the tree.’

  ‘Peanut, I know you love it, but it’s only a tree. When we move into our new house there’ll be lots of trees.’

  ‘It’s Bobby’s tree. If you cut it down he won’t have anywhere to live.’

  ‘Bobby can come and live with us in the new house.’

  ‘No. He can’t.’ Maria moved so quickly the back of her chair didn’t hit the floor until she was halfway up the hall.

  Susan stood, but Paul grabbed her hand. ‘Wait. The book says not to give in to tantrums.’